| That's KM's biggest achievement so far. on 23:15 - May 2 by DarkBrandon |
He mentioned the challenges this season, but didn’t go into details.
I assume he’s talking about players leaving who he didn’t want to lose (Hutchinson, Burgess, Tuanzebe, Morsy, maybe Szmodics - I forget the details there) and missing out on players he did want (Hackney).
Maybe also the Summer business was done so late that not only did many players miss pre-season, they missed the first few games of the season.
Anything else I’m missing? |
I don't think we can really know the nature, and scale of some of the challenges he's faced. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but it's possible that there was friction behind the scenes as regards transfer business. Who's call is it to pursue a player, or how hard to push to get a player, or when to give up and go for second choice, etc.
Similarly with (rumoured) issues like SS - that's a hard enough situation even if there's no aggro as rumoured - a top scorer not performing, arguably out of position. If the rumoured issue is true, that's disharmony, which is the thing Kieran clearly likes least.
And then with Farage-gate. Who knows how strongly some of the squad felt, and what a difficult position that may have put Kieran in, as regards Ashton. The fans generally thought Kieran handled it very well. I agree. But who knows what toll it took behind the scenes. As it happened, we pulled together and had decent form towards the end.
But yeah, all of the issue you mention, too. Looking at our form over the season, we never had a Norwich/Southampton run of wins, but we were actually quite consistent (for this division!) after our initial stutter. That initial stutter was tough, and clearly not part of the plan. It put us on the back foot, and was surely caused by the disruption of player losses and signings.
Muric was a headache. Morsy must have been a big headache, especially given his importance to us. Who knows what went on there - that was plain weird. I can't think of a similar situation at any other club. Captain, talisman, we'd ideally want to keep him, he's in contract, we let him go for free, no public bust up. It's not like Kieran thought he was past it. There may be more to it. Who knows.
And doing our inward business pretty late was clearly unfortunate. Even the great Matusiwa took a while to fit in and get up to speed.
This time round, let's hope we can do our business early. But it's never easy! |  |
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